Political tit for tat over delayed CCPA amendment

EDUCATION MINISTER Fayval Williams has suggested that the Opposition was intentionally delaying the much-anticipated amendment of section 24 of the Child Care and Protection Act (CCPA) after lawmakers suspended the debate of the Bill yesterday.

Speaking in the House of Representatives, opposition leader and president of the People’s National Party (PNP), Mark Golding, proposed that the debate of the Bill be suspended and further requested for more time to review, in full, the details of it before discussions could be had.

While Golding acknowledged the issue of children being deemed “uncontrollable” and thrown into penal institutions was a longstanding problem, he said that the solution appeared to be using “the children’s court as a kind of triage for a whole new body and cohort of children exhibiting with behavioural challenges”.

He further stated that this approach was “unusual” and “problematic” and that he was not yet “comfortable with attempting to speak to it, having only really focused on it today”.

Other opposition members of parliament (MPs) who supported the suspension were Phillip Paulwell, MP for Kingston East and Port Royal and Lisa Hanna, shadow minister for foreign affairs and foreign trade.

“You can fast-track this and ram it through, you know,” Hanna argued, noting that a number of children would be negatively affected as a result.

She urged legislators to be more cautious when considering what they would be ‘rubber-stamping’, with their seal of approval.

Hanna added that there were two clauses in the Bill which she was not in agreement with, but did not specify which clauses she was referring to.

Meanwhile, in apparent frustration, Williams expressed that the Bill, which was laid in Parliament a week ago did not entail “significant or massive” amendments that would need a prolonged time to be considered.

“Madam Speaker, the [CCPA] is an Act that Jamaicans have called on us to amend. This Act went through a significant joint select committee ... that was in 2016, Madam Speaker, seven years ago. Do you know how many children have been hurt since then over the past seven years? Here we are now, we’re trying to change the environment ... where children are not branded as being uncontrollable,” she explained.

In December 2016, a joint select committee was appointed to complete the statutory review of the Sexual Offences Act, with the review of other legislation aimed at the protection of women, children, the disabled and the elderly from violence, Williams said.

The report of this committee, she added, was adopted by the House of Representatives on November 5, 2019 and by the Senate on July 10, 2020.

“We want the psyche of Jamaicans to begin to see our children who are exhibiting behavioural issues from mild to chronic, to see them as children in need of care and protection,” she added.

Not ‘controversial’

Williams noted that the Bill should not be seen as “controversial”, but that both sides of the House should support.

She further criticised the Opposition for not mentioning, specifically, the areas of the Bill that they needed time to consider.

“But at the same time, Madam Speaker, in the interest of ensuring that we have a unified position on our children, I will wait the week for whatever it is that they will be coming with but again, Madam Speaker, this is just an example of how things get delayed in Parliament as part of the process,” she said, maintaining her stance that the Bill was tabled in adequate time.

“But here they go again, wanting a delay,” she added.

Minister Williams had also revealed that the national children’s registry (NCR) received approximately 5,000 cases yearly of children aged 14 to 17 years old who are displaying behavioural challenges and are treated through the CPFSA’s children and family support units.

“Madam Speaker, the position of the Ministry of Education and Youth is that allowing use of a correctional order without a child committing a criminal action...is an injustice against the child who may be exhibiting trauma derived from abuse, neglect and suffering and needs psychological treatment,” she said.

She stated that the amendment of this legislation was a part of a bigger transformation of education and a major pillar is the governance, accountability and legislative changes.

Minister with responsibility for information, Robert Morgan, along with Juliet Cuthbert Flynn, state minister in the Ministry of National Security, was in support of Williams’ position.

“If one child during this delay is sent to a penal institution it’s a wicked and cruel act by the country and Government,” Morgan said.

“I personally am disturbed that even now there are children who are deemed as uncontrollable in penal institutions being exposed to charged criminals,” he added.

During her remarks, Cuthbert Flynn further lamented that factors such as the more than 3,000 children who were sexually abused; the crisis of ‘fatherlessness’ in Jamaica -- with approximately 47 per cent of children living in a single parent household with mothers; and the many cases of unreported incidents that go unnoticed in the nation contributed to why children had behavioural issues and needed intervention.

“We can therefore assume that a number of our people are facing...trauma daily and many times this trauma is untreated. Do we wonder why we have so many persons in society so angry?” she said.